In Retrospect

Personally, I can’t believe it’s been more than year since I started the whole watch the 100 Best Movies in 100 Days Thing. It simultaneously feels like yesterday and ages ago. And to be honest I miss it, there was always something to be watched, and always the assurance that it would be amazing. And in the age of “Sex Tape” and yet another live action “Hercules” there was something incredibly comforting about that. Though it was time consuming, every morning I would wake up slightly more cultured and understand a few more pop culture references. Maybe not so surprisingly, watching “10 Things I Hate About You” yet again does not provide me with the same opportunity.

Even a year later, I attempt to bring up my experience as much as possible. Surrounded by film students I find myself not so humbly bragging about my ability to watch a movie every day for months on end. Feeling slightly precocious as I gasp in horror that my peers have not seen “All About Eve” or “Modern Times” and insist that they watch it immediately.

Yet watching all these movies has only amplified the fact that there are so many movies I haven’t seen. The 100 movies is barely a dent in the thousands of amazing movies, it’s fairly overwhelming, and I try not to think about it too much.

And as I spend another Saturday morning channel surfing, the longing for another list, another goal remerges with a vengeance. Reading other list claiming to have “The Best Movies of All Time” has turned into a broken record of “seen it”, which is simultaneously exciting and disappointing. Much like the ending of “The Graduate”, I’m facing the overwhelming “well, what now?” Once you’ve seen “the best” what’s next? The best TV shows couldn’t be achieved in the same snappy 100 days and novels have never been able to stir up the same passion as their visual counterparts.

Yet I refuse to be discouraged, I will find another itch that needs to be scratched, another reason to spend countless hours doing what I love to do: watching from the couch.